Blue Kingdom (18 page)

A hot-faced boy of twenty stood in the doorway and waved his hat at them.

“Dunmore's through!” he called.

“He ain't!” exclaimed Lynn Tucker. “It's a lie. He couldn't do it with Petersen and all the rest in line.”

“He went straight through the line. I got it straight.”

“How?”

“Why, a damn'simple way. The three of 'em held up a load of hay and got into it. Dunmore laid there behind the driver with a rifle lyin' in the holler of his back, and that driver come right on through the lines. . . .”

“The blockheads,” broke out Tucker. “That trick's the oldest in the world and. . . .”

“So's four aces, Lynn,” Beatrice interjected, “but it still wins a lot of money.”

He glared at her. “Of course, I'm mighty glad they're through,” he muttered.

“You look it,” she sneered. “You better have some more coffee, and make it half sugar this time. You need sweetening, beautiful.”

“Where did you hear this?” asked Tankerton.

“The word just passed up to Chuck Harper's place. He was bettin' three to one that Dunmore never would reach the mountains this trip. In come Chris Lane with the news, on a deadbeat hoss.”

“Where's Dunmore now?”

“Comin' up from down Rusty Gulch way.”

“He'll be here before the morning, then,” said Tankerton, “if he's mounted. There are plenty of people to mount them in that part of the mountain. Go find yourself a bunk, Biff. Thanks for the news. It's mighty welcome to all of us.”

The door closed on Biff, and, as it did so, Beatrice, on her couch, broke into a subdued chuckling.

“What's so funny?” snapped Lynn Tucker.

“This yarn in the magazine,” said the girl.

“Let us in on it, will you?”

“Sure. It tells about three pikers who were grouchy because they couldn't set up the cards on a tenderfoot.”

“Meaning us, I suppose?” demanded Tucker.

She threw the magazine into a far corner and sat up with gleaming eyes. “Ah, don't try to make a baby of me!” she exclaimed. “I see through the set of you. You'd all like to take his heart out and peel it like an orange to see what's inside. You want to see what makes it go.”

“You tell us, Beatrice,” Legges said. “You know a great deal about anatomy.”

“I'll tell you what makes it go, sure,” she answered. “Nerve!”

At this, there was a chorus of shouting from the men in the clearing, and immediately afterward the door was jerked open without ceremony by an excited member of the band who shouted: “He's here! He's just come in! Dunmore, and the other pair with him, and. . . .”

Beatrice Kirk leaned for her magazine, and, having reached it, she threw it accurately at the head of the messenger.

“What the . . . ?” gasped the man, barely ducking in time, as the magazine flew like the flutter of a bird's whip past his head.

“You knock before you enter here, you long-legged half-pint of moonshine,” she said amiably.

The door was jerked shut by the angry man, and the doctor, smoothing his beard, remarked: “That's to
make us think she doesn't care about him. Oh, Beatrice, you're a clever child. I'd be proud to have you for a daughter.”

“He's here, then,” said Tucker, “and I can ask him why he didn't carry out his promise to stop the train in the gulch and. . . .”

“You'd better come along and find him, then,” said the girl. “Because he won't come in here. He's not the kind to go around blowing trumpets.”

“He'll be here in two minutes,” Legges said with assuredness. “He just wants to brush his hair and dust his boots for you, honey.”

“What's the bay horse that I ride worth?” she snapped.

“I paid eight hundred for him,” said Tankerton.

“How long have you had him?” asked the doctor.

“Not two weeks.”

“Then he's probably half broken down. Not worth a penny more than four hundred now. What about it?”

“You mossy old deadbeat,” said Beatrice. “The bay against a hundred that I'm right about Dunmore not coming in here, and that you're wrong.”

“A hundred dollars? My dear, I'll have my saddle on that horse in the morning.”

“You take me?”

“I do.”

“The bet's made,” she said. “You witness it, James. You'll see Father Time, there, crying into his beard and paying me the money before the night's over.”

Suddenly they were silent, waiting. The fire crackled. The smoke fumed slowly up from Legges's pipe.

“Look at the doctor, breathing hard,” Beatrice said at last. “This strain is going to tell on him.”

“It's ten minutes,” said Tankerton. “She's right, Legges.”

“She's not right. Give him time.”

Again they were silent. The girl picked up her magazine and lay back among the cushions, humming to herself, and that soft sound of music made the three men look scowlingly askance at her.

At last Tankerton murmured unwillingly: “It appears that she's right, Doc.”

“She knows men,” growled Lynn Tucker.

“Why shouldn't she?” barked Legges in sudden passion. “She's held enough hands and. . . .”

Beatrice did not look up, but, with her eyes on the magazine, she lifted one forefinger. “Steady, Doctor,” she said, “I'm just reading about a fellow who had to eat red-hot coals. And . . . he had dyspepsia the rest of his life.”

Legges rose with a groan of impatience. “Well, let's go find him,” he said, “and let Lynn Tucker ask him his question.”

They could not find Dunmore. He had vanished, and no man knew where he had gone from the camp, but they could and did find Chelton in the middle of the bunkhouse with a circle of excited listeners about him. He himself talked in a husky voice, roughened by a cold, and this gave him a peculiar monotony and lifelessness of speech. Besides, now and again he interrupted himself, coughing, so that what he had to say was spoken in a tone of almost mathematical abstraction. Immediately everyone felt that there were no imaginings in this story; they felt that it was rather an understatement than an exaggeration, as the recovered member of the band went on with his narrative.

Sometimes they broke in upon him with feeling questions and remarks.

“Settin' there on the seat, ironed up to Petersen, that must've been rough.”

“Mighty nigh as rough as a rope fitted around your neck,” said Chelton.

“You done some thinkin' about that same rope, old son.”

“I went through the whole job, over and over. I'd start at the time I faced the judge for sentence, and then sashay into the death cell, and then eat my last meal, and smoke my last cigar, and then waltz out onto the platform and make my last statement. . . .”

“What would you say in your last statement, kid?” asked one of the older men, who himself actually had once been in the death cell for a week before a prison break.

“I always told 'em all to go shoot themselves,” Chelton responded, and paused to cough again.

“Go on, kid, and tell us what happened after some of 'em left the car.”

“Well,” said Chelton, “they'd all gone out except the sheriff that was buckled to me like a spur to a boot, and three or four others. Was it three or four?” Chelton turned toward Jimmy Larren. “How many was it, Jimmy?” he asked.

Jimmy looked at the ceiling. “Four,” said Jimmy.

“The sheriff and four more. That makes five altogether,” said one of the men. “That's what I'd call a crowd.”

“It was a crowd, all right,” said Chelton. “And us with the iron on me.”

“I bet you felt as cold as sweatin' iron inside, kid.”

“I didn't feel no other way,” assented Chelton. “Now, as I was sayin', there was the five of 'em, and right down the aisle was the kid and the blind man. I told you how Petersen mighty nigh smelled out the truth about that blind man.”

“That was a squeeze.”

“But I gotta admit,” went on Chelton, “that I hadn't guessed anything. I thought that Petersen was a fool, and so did the rest of the posse. They was clean thrown off their guards. And then up gets the old blind man, and comes fumblin' aft, with the kid clawin' at him and tryin' to tell him that wasn't their station. But he wouldn't stop and listen. The sheriff bawled out to him, but, just then, he got to the posse and let out at 'em. . . .”

“With two guns?”

“He don't need guns, when he's got two iron dukes like his. He slammed a red-headed sucker in the mouth so hard that you could hear the teeth go rattlin' down his throat, and then he made a half turn and poked a fat yap from Montana under the chin and lifted him through the windowpane and halfway out of the window. . . .” He paused and coughed again.

“Go on, kid! What was the others doin'?”

“Why, what time did they have to do nothin'? Dunmore was dealing punches faster than Mississippi Slim ever dealt a poker hand. The third gent was just on the rise with his gun, when Dunmore shoved a bunch of fives into his face and spread his nose across both cheeks. Then he reached for the sheriff, and the sheriff had his gun out, but he was too late. He turned as soggy as a half-filled sack of bran.”

“Ain't you leaving something out?” Jimmy Larren inserted.

Chelton looked with blank and fixed eyes upon the boy. Then he said slowly: “Sure, I'm leavin' something out. I'm leavin' it out on purpose, to put it at the end. The fourth gent was about to send a slug through Dunmore's
back that would've busted him in two, when Jimmy Larren, here, dived between his legs and put him down. His head . . . it clipped on the iron bindin' of a seat, and he was out for good.”

“That must've made enough noise, that fight, to let everybody know what was happenin'?” asked a voice.

“Sure it did. Made as much noise as a brass band all made up of nothing but slide trombones, and for the cymbal crashes there was gents knocked through windows of the car, and that kind of thing. The rest of the posse and about a hundred other gents piled into the car.” He stopped again to cough.

“Go on, Chelton. You can cough all night, after you're finished.”

“He's gotta have a chance to think a little,” someone suggested dryly.

But this suggestion was not received with favor. There was no man more feared and hated by the long riders than Sheriff Petersen, and they rejoiced in this tale of his downfall.

“Go on, Chelton. Don't mind that leatherhead, Borrow. He don't know nothin'. They was pilin' into the car, you said. . . .”

“Well, there was the three of us, then,” said the undaunted Chelton in the same monotonous voice. “With Dunmore first, we cut through 'em like nothin' at all. The thuddin' of Dunmore's fists sounded like the beatin' of a drum. We got out and sprinted for the other side of the track where there was the hosses an' the buckboard that I told you about seein'. Dunmore got the hosses while I popped three or four of the
hombres
that was follerin' and made 'em duck.”

“Didn't kill none?”

“There was one that won't kick no more,” said the indomitable Chelton. “I'd say there was one, wouldn't you, kid?”

Jimmy Larren shook his head gloomily. “There was one they'll have to bury,” he agreed, and rolled up his eyes as though appalled at the thought.

To this much of the story, Beatrice and her three companions had listened, but now Lynn Tucker broke in with: “It was kind of a pity that Dunmore didn't wait until the train got into the pass before he made his bust. D'you think so, Chelton?”

At this, Chelton turned gradually red; his eyes bulged a little in the extremity of his wrath. Finally he said: “Tucker, you done the plannin' of that job, I guess?”

“I done it, and what was wrong with it?” asked Lynn Tucker.

He said it aggressively. There were only two men in the world from whom he accepted checks, and their names were Tankerton and Legges. Perhaps Dunmore was now to be added, and it made his heart sore to think that he now stood fourth on the list. But as for the rest, even such a fellow as Chelton, he regarded them not at all.

“I done it,” he said to Chelton. “Could you've fixed it up any better, young feller?”

Chelton stiffened. “You planned it for Running Hoss Gulch?” he inquired.

“I did. Would you've picked an open plain, if you had been me?”

“If I had done the pickin' and the choosin',” Chelton
said, “I would've talked to myself and not shot my face off all over the world, old-timer.”

“Who did I talk to, except the chief?” Tucker asked, more savagely than before.

Chelton turned a bit and faced Tucker. “Then maybe it was you . . . or maybe it was Tankerton himself . . . that sent word to Petersen to double-cross the boys that was layin' in wait in Running Hoss Gulch . . . and to get Dunmore caught in a trap, and hanged alongside of me, in the finish? Which of the two of you was it?”

As for Tucker, his lean face turned gray, but not with fear. It was wildest anger that worked at him and made his mouth tremble and twitch. Tankerton merely took out a pipe and filled it carelessly, looking from Tucker to Chelton as though the affair were entirely theirs.

“I ain't gonna say that this here is a lie,” declared Lynn Tucker, after a moment. “I'm gonna wait to hear what else you gotta say, before I tell you the hat size of the champeen liar of the world, and the worst fool. Go right along, Chelton, and, when you get to the end, lemme know.”

Chelton said calmly, with the calmness of truth: “I heard the sheriff make a speech to his gang, and in that speech he told the boys that the Tankertons was ready and waitin' for them in the Running Hoss Gulch, and how they would tackle the baggage car and the smokin' car to get money and me. How he had a federal marshal up there in the baggage car, and how they was all to get their rifles hot, as soon as the Tankertons rushed the train. He talked about head money, and the rest. But he sure knew all about the plan that Lynn Tucker made. Now, I say, how did he find it out?”